Found this Feb 2022 Fillmore show on youtube (thank u Tyler!) and it's got a great version of The Driver which starts at about the 1:10:45 mark (according to setlist.com that's the only club xiii song they played that night)
I thought there were three singles or whatever they're referred to as these days.
Come on, ya gotta keep up with the thread kudzu
I have. Upthread, Zip acknowledged there have been three singles so far. If you're referring to what songs are called that are released in advance of an album, I guess they're still singles but in the days of old (pre-downloads/streaming), there was usually only one released before an album came out. That was generally around a month before the album's release. In the case of Welcome 2 Club XIII, there's been three songs released since May 3rd.
Love me some Bandcamp on release day as I ordered physical copies that may take a while lol. Been spinnin the album since about 6 am. Gotta say it’s good. Mellow in comparison to the past three. I miss the pissed off political angst a little. They do it so well. Don’t know how it sits in my favs overall or even in comparison to the last three yet. That will take some time for me. I was right as of today….my fav song on it is the JTE song “We Will Never Wake You Up In The Morning” I need “The Driver” to grow on me still.
No luck finding the album locally. No surprise considering my only option in this area is big box stores. However, believe it or not, there was a time when you could find Truckers albums at the likes of Best Buy. No more, at least here. I even considered making the hour and half drive to Wilmington (NC) to pick it up but even the indie record stores don't have it there which was a surprise. It would probably help if I was looking for it on vinyl (as opposed to CD) but that's not an option at present. Thankfully, I do have an Amazon gift card so it looks like an order is in my immediate future. There's lots of things I miss about living in the Triangle. Living within close proximity to several record stores is one of 'em.
I've been streaming the album all day at work. sounds great.
Three things I love about "the driver"
-- the guitar tone (or whatever you call that) at the very start
-- the line about only knowing one side of a story
-- the two separate, strong references to the Replacements
Great.
No luck finding the album locally. No surprise considering my only option in this area is big box stores. However, believe it or not, there was a time when you could find Truckers albums at the likes of Best Buy. No more, at least here. I even considered making the hour and half drive to Wilmington (NC) to pick it up but even the indie record stores don't have it there which was a surprise. It would probably help if I was looking for it on vinyl (as opposed to CD) but that's not an option at present. Thankfully, I do have an Amazon gift card so it looks like an order is in my immediate future. There's lots of things I miss about living in the Triangle. Living within close proximity to several record stores is one of 'em.
Ordered it 3 months ago on amazon. Was left on my doorstep around noon today.
No luck finding the album locally. No surprise considering my only option in this area is big box stores. However, believe it or not, there was a time when you could find Truckers albums at the likes of Best Buy. No more, at least here. I even considered making the hour and half drive to Wilmington (NC) to pick it up but even the indie record stores don't have it there which was a surprise. It would probably help if I was looking for it on vinyl (as opposed to CD) but that's not an option at present. Thankfully, I do have an Amazon gift card so it looks like an order is in my immediate future. There's lots of things I miss about living in the Triangle. Living within close proximity to several record stores is one of 'em.
Ordered it 3 months ago on amazon. Was left on my doorstep around noon today.
Considering past experience with local big box stores I figured I could probably find it locally. If not there, at least at one of the indie stores in Wilmington. Vinyl, maybe but on CD, no.
Who was Maria, what did she disclose, and why was it awful? Also the weird guitar part on this song reminds me of Tomorrow Never Knows from Revolver.
It's a QAnon analog based on "The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk" which was a sensation in the early to mid-nineteenth century. The disclosures, like QAnon bullshit, weren't true.
"The first thing you have to understand about the Awful Disclosures is that they are not true. The second thing you have to understand is that Maria Monk had very little to do with writing it. Her story is a pathetic one, just not the one she would have you believe. Maria Monk was born to a Protestant family in St. Johns, Quebec in 1816 or 1817. In an affidavit written after the scandal of the Awful Disclosures broke, Maria Monk's mother described her as an uncontrollable child, a fact she attributed to a brain injury suffered when Maria was little more than a toddler: a slate pencil was rammed into her ear, penetrating her skull. From that time on, according to her mother's testimony, Maria was uncontrollable and subject to wild fantasies. Her only known contact with a Catholic institution was as an inmate of the Magdalene asylum in Montreal. When it was discovered that she had become pregnant while resident in the asylum, she was asked to remove herself from that institution. It was then, aged eighteen and pregnant, that she met William K. Hoyte, head of the Canadian Benevolent Society, an organization that combined Protestant missionary work with ardent anti-Catholic activism. Hoyte took Monk as his mistress, and together they traveled to New York. At this late date, we will never know how much of the story originated with Monk's disordered imagination and how much of it was created by the opportunistic Hoyte. Hoyte called upon his fellow nativists, Rev. J. J. Slocum, Rev. George Bourne, Theodore Dwight, and others; collectively they wrote the Awful Disclosures. Maria Monk is believed to have contributed details of the city of Montreal and of the practices she observed in the Magdalene asylum. This much is known because shortly after the publication of the Awful Disclosures, the cabal began to fight amongst themselves over the profits, and several suits and counter-suits were initiated in the New York courts: Slocum was the principal author, Hoyte and Bourne were major contributors, and the others mostly just offered suggestions. Slocum and Maria Monk banded together in suing the others and their publishing house, Harper and Brothers. Maria Monk then left Hoyte to became the companion of Slocum. Monk was still under-age, and Slocum was appointed her guardian."
Wow...This album! I downloaded it onto my phone and "spun" it on repeat a dozen times on an overnight, and crowded, trans-Atlantic flight yesterday. I think it might have some of both PH and Cooleys top tier songs on it. Great production, mixing and mastering throughout and it sounds really good on both headset and my crappy living room system.
So many musical "nuggets" and lyrical "easter-eggs" (in lack of a better term) referencing their earlier songs. Loving the perfect "segue" from The Driver to the opening chords of Maria's awful disclosure. The fiddle and harmonica on Forged in Hell..., (btw, that harmonica reminds me of the Beatles Love me do). Jay's spaced out guitar on The Driver (I believe this is the Another An-other pedal by Mid-fi Electronics at work here?). The girls' backing vocals are astounding.
Thanks for the history lesson TC and Dr John. It's crazy how cooley somehow finds these tiny forgotten nuggets of history, like this one and Ramon Casiano for example, and turns them into rock and roll songs.
Thanks for the history lesson TC and Dr John. It's crazy how cooley somehow finds these tiny forgotten nuggets of history, like this one and Ramon Casiano for example, and turns them into rock and roll songs.
Just 'cause Cooley ain't on the internet, doesn't mean he don't know how to use it
TL; DR: I really love this record. It might be my favorite.
I’m not going to pretend that I can in any way be objective about this band, and after many, many listens, this record. This is not a professional record review. (I would certainly fisk myself if I tried and failed).
Among other attributes, the record just perfectly communicates the feelings of the past few years, where so many of us suffered personal and communal losses, and tried to both figure out how to get through each damn day, but also tried, are still trying, to figure out a larger meaning, if one can be found.
This record is, to me (and of course everyone else will take away something different from such a multi-faceted work) the reckoning, the attempt to find that imperfect truth, to rigorously examine how and why we’re living, how we relate to and better understand each other, and wanting to make all the losses, mistakes, missteps and lost moments mean something bigger. And to be more alive to each other, while we’re still alive.
At the same time it’s also about recasting the past from the vantage point of being older, and, if not wiser, then more willing to accept uncertainty, to be less judgmental. I look at the several songs on Welcome 2 Club XIII that deal with what seem to be people in the throes of addiction, destructive behavior, and there is quite a contrast in the lack of judgment here, as opposed to older songs like “Do It Yourself” or “When the Pin Hits the Shell”. Both of those songs have Cooley and Patterson’s usual empathy, but also a fair amount of judgment. Here, with “Shake and Pine”, “We Will Never Wake You Up in the Morning”, “Wilder Days”, and “Every Single Storied Flameout”, when there isn’t a direct “I’ve been there, too”, there is a much greater awareness of the flawed humanity just trying to get things right, and a sadness, as opposed to harsher emotions when despite all efforts, all efforts fail.
My sense is that the positive early reaction to the record has less of a chance of fading than with recent efforts. The themes here are timeless: loss, and how we cope with it; family, and the damage done; memory, and how it both changes as we change, and is altered by new information, new things we learn, and people we meet who change the way we look at both past and present. I loved the political aspect of the recent records, as the baseline point-of-view the band always had was simply made plainer, and of course, in fairness, closely aligned with my own.
But here, other than “Maria’s Awful Disclosures” 180+ year-old tale being analogous to QAnon, showing that there is nothing new under the American sun, and that, like in Peter Gabriel’s “Mother of Violence” (“fear/is the mother of violence”), there will always be an audience for grotesque interpersonal horror and turning that horror into hatred, the themes, as the band have explained, are personal, words between two people leaning in to hear each other, heads close together, not shouted for the benefit of a larger group. These are intimate, heartfelt songs, where the stakes are high, but the stakes of meaningful conversations among friends, among family, not a state.
Of course, these overriding themes should not detract from each song’s individual power and meaning. And, as a interwoven batch of songs, as opposed to the collection that was “The New OK”, these songs do indeed work together, speak to each other, as well as speak to older DBT songs.
The music does not in any way take a backseat to the lyrics, though the lyrical themes are so very strong.
“The Driver” begins with its huge, Sabbath-y riff, entering then pausing and lingering, and despite its immediate power, comes with big, dramatic, looming hesitations, while behind the main guitar, Cooley and Jay squeak and squawk, notes poking out, commenting on the main riff. This is a song to rattle the walls; Brad and Matt focusing on pure power. (I love the shimmering guitar effects in the second verse). Patterson has always been adept and comfortable with the "recitative", and "The Driver" is no exception. He manages, in spoken word, to provide movement and accentuate meaning. It's not an easy thing to do, and he does it so well here.
There are references to DBT songs past, “Hell No, I Ain’t Happy”, and “Days of Graduation” in particular.
Several reviews have over-simplified the meaning of this song as travelogue, but talking about this song as a song about driving, is, as I’ve said, like saying “There Will Be Blood” is about oil, or “The Lottery” about games of chance. The driving in the song is a vehicle (pun intended) for speaking of transformation, of discovery, of realizing one’s place in the world, not when one sits and ponders, but when you go and do something as normal as go for a drive...and the truth just hits you, as if your defenses were down, and let it in.
The first bit of big magic on the record happens with a non-band member, Schaefer Llana, singing, like a siren, the first chorus’ “flying/flying/flying…” in a gorgeous, ascending melody. Here, as elsewhere on the record, the band creates indelible hooks out of both choruses and verses, showing that you don’t need to beat someone over the head to get a phrase, a melody, really stuck in there.
As the song evolves, the pile-driving rhythm gets wilder, more forward. Brad’s machine-gun fills before the choruses are stop-your breath brilliant, dramatic and astonishing like a storm can be, while never steering the song off the rails. Patterson’s scream after “we drove on past a near flaming demise” will certainly be accompanied live by many Heathens in full-throated glory.
From the very start, it’s impossible not to notice just how fucking great the record sounds. They may have “knocked it out” in three days, but all over the record, there are incredibly distinct moments, even in the blazing end of "The Driver", when you can still make out every single contribution. It is, to me, their best sounding record in years.
“Maria’s Awful Disclosures” is like The Beatles finally getting to hang out with XTC at Elvis Costello’s place in the late 80s. Taking psychedelic elements, and fusing them effortlessly to the usual DBT sound.
The historical source is less important than the actual words and sound. Again, it sounds amazing, and that’s before you get to the backwards guitars, which are fantastic, riding above a typically fluid Matt Patton bassline. They reflect the shattered mind of the main character.
Over time, both Cooley and Patterson have become better and better vocalists, and here is one of Cooley’s greatest single performances. The way he hits the words “infanticide” and “asylums” is remarkable, power and clear tone together.
Again, this song is another example of how you don’t need a repetitive chorus to have a brilliant hook, Every note counts, which serves as a sort of the watchword of the whole record.
Musically, there are the sparkling guitars sharding out before the bridge; the beautiful, subtle transition from bridge back to the main verses. (And an excellent use of egg shaker).
Even with the backwards guitars here, there’s not a lot of fussiness. This means that every note chosen matters, both on the quieter songs, and on the heavier ones.
In both of Cooley’s songs on “Welcome 2 Club XIII”, there’s language that's just not usual for a rock song. Long, arching lines, meter stretched to its breaking point, but never broken, melody erupting from the tension.
The QAnon analogy is there; but subtle enough to leave aside, if you’re inclined. There’s also a really strong connection to “Grievance Merchants”, but contained in a more straightforward song.
"Shake and Pine" has a terrific little misdirection at the top, as PH’s guitar comes charging in, but then pauses. Brad joins him alone at first, just clicking the drumsticks together.
Musically, Brad’s bell strike before the 2nd verse, and his beautiful quick fill before the 2nd chorus show again just how musical a drummer he is, his astonishing ability to “speak” in such small, discreet moments.
Throughout the song, and much of the record, like never before the band shows an uncanny skill at not crowding, leaving such perfect space for the melody, for each instrument to add just the right amount.
And as someone who loves little imperfections, or just glimpses behind the production, I love things like hearing one of the guitar players prepare to come in right before the full band does. It’s subtle, in the left speaker, but places the listener in the room during the recording. (And this was without listening stoned!)
The lyrics are poetically indirect; the images specific, but imagistic. Patterson is too good a writer to not give a listener some tactile lines to hang the less literal ones on, beautiful couplets like “Blood on the sawdust/light coming in from a broken window pane”, and he ends with the absolutely gorgeous, lump-in-the-throat making"
“We saw it all
reaching for the stars
but only catching dust”
The band executes a perfect retard under these lines, and it’s a magnificent maneuver to bring the song to rest.
“We Will Never Wake You Up in the Morning’s” extended, glistening intro reminds me of Death Cab for Cutie’s “Grapevine Fires”, and the lyrics communicate a similar, though far more personal destruction. This, to me, is easily one of the Truckers’ greatest moments, from start to its extraordinary, heart-rending finish.
They take their time here; an understated, yet insistent groove. Swells from Cooley’s slide. The relatively prosaic first line is a set up for the brilliant writing that comes. Patterson exhibits a simply beautiful rhyme structure: Interior rhymes, interlocking couplets, and the music is a perfect example of every musician seeming to understand how special a song is, and not playing a single extraneous note.
The bridge rises momentarily, but the dream described is just that: “a brief salvation”. It also acknowledges that even in the throes of addiction, there can be beauty, or at least the dream of it.
Again, without showiness, the rhythm section shines, with Brad’s bell strikes, and Matt’s perfectly fluid line.
As I alluded to earlier, both men have become simply superb singers. Here, Patterson never over-emotes, when it would be perfectly understandable to go that route to convey the loss. It’s an almost indescribable sadness he communicates here, again, showing how great a vocalist he’s become. He strikes the perfect tone throughout, when the fragility of the song could not bear a false note. There are none.
Then, toward the end, he hits us with this:
“Buenas noches sweet prince
behind the eight-ball and your rent
you fix your notice on your door
and all your money’s spent
hearts broken from your actions
but you had the best intentions
there were bottles in your bedroom
but nothing in the kitchen.
And the last time we ever saw you
you were clinging to the barroom
days on end we tried to call you
bells were ringing/tears were falling
the door was opened by the cops
but you were up above the treetops
we will never wake you up in the morning.
From the first time I heard these shattering words, I just lost it on a fucking subway car in rush hour New York City. Then again on the street, walking up to my office. Listening in the car while up in Massachusetts. In their specificity and ability to translate to very personal pain, these might be, in a career of being able to write brilliant, funny, heartfelt, poetic, imagistic, detailed lyrics, the best verses Patterson has ever written. It’s a perfect example of show, don’t tell, and it’s art does not sacrifice one little bit of direct power. The actions of the character are so clear, the path he's on so apparent, yet no image is forced, and it's just perfect.
Brad’s fill, a shining example of how a drum part can bring emotion, leads into the instrumental that ends the song, where once again, there’s no blazing guitar, but a magnificently aching Cooley solo, perfectly mirroring the enormous hurt and sadness of the lyrics and melody that came before. Matt's descending bass line takes us home. To me, this song rises right now to near the very top of the best things DBT has ever done. A mature, heartrending masterpiece.
The “Rock and Roll, Pt. 2” drum beat of “Welcome 2 Club XIII” comes as a somewhat welcome relief from the heaviness of “We Will Never…” (Not to say I don’t go back to that prior song again and again, but in the context of what’s come before, it feels like respite). I don’t know if this is intentional, but almost every other song goes fairly speedily into the next, including two that overlap (“The Driver” into “Maria…”; “Billy Ringo…” into “Wilder Days”). Here, there are nearly 15 longseconds from the start of the fade before “Welcome 2 Club XIII” starts. I think it’s intentional, given how jarring the transition might sound.
The guitars sound deceptively “junky”, but in a great, “guys playing in a room together” way. Really, they’re just raw, serrated, and land perfectly over the swing of Brad and Matt.
The repeated title line is a total earworm, and stuck with me from the first archive recording I heard, as well as during homecoming. Every line is a punch line, and the targets also of course include the protagonists as well.
There are inside jokes (“horse-farm drunk”), a wonderful key change, shouted group choruses, cheerful obscenity…the song is a welcome oasis of pure, dark fun on a record of much darker portent. It is testament to the band giving zero fucks that the catchiest song they’ve written in some time, the first single off this record, includes lines like “penny beer and cheap cocaine”; “our glory days did kinda suck”, “we’ll smell of weed and gasoline”, and of course, the line destined to be shouted at every Rock Show from now till doomsday “everyone needs a friend/everyone needs a fuck” #truth.
“Forged in Hell and Heaven Sent” struck me, in some weird, “what is wrong with your brain?!” way of The Kinks/Ray Davies meets Workingman’s Dead. Like The Kinks’ observational lyrics about characters they knew from Are The Village Green Preservation Society and Muswell Hillbillies with the slightly stoned roll of the American Beauty/Workingman’s era Dead.
Patterson’s voice melds beautifully with Margo Price’s here. In fact, all the guest appearances have the benefit of not being “stunt casting” Like the band themselves, every person contributes something essential, as if they also got the zeitgeist of “no wasted moments” that the band so clearly exhibits.
The song is an acknowledgment of time passed, but with the knowledge that you can’t any longer just let the time pass without at least trying to be present, if for nothing else then to do it for those who can’t.
This is a rare thing as well, as one of two songs that fade out, but I can very much see the end of this one becoming one where they stretch out live; it sounds like it may have happened in the studio, but the fade occurs before any fireworks really erupt. Nevertheless, this song has grown on me a lot since the first listens, and I love the groove and effortless flow here.
Patterson has recently called “Every Single Storied Flameout” his favorite EVER Drive-By Truckers’ song, and who’s to argue? For years, the It’s Great to Be Alive version of “A Ghost to Most” was my absolute favorite song ever, but now, I can’t deny that this one has burrowed into my subconscious almost beyond understanding (something it has in common with AGTM), to the point where I wake up thinking about it, having it rattle around my head, and have it rise unbidden during the day. (Do you know what it’s like to have to bite your tongue to stop yourself from bursting into a song during a business Zoom meeting? I DO). I guess listening to a song 5, 6, 7 times a day for a few months will DO that to a person. I’ve never grown tired of it, never stopped discovering new things in the various versions I’ve heard, and while the lyrics immediately connected with me, they keep digging in to me, deeper, and deeper.
In my case, as I’ve written elsewhere, it was the Salt Lake City live version, likely one of the greatest single song performances I have by anyone, that hooked me. The album version is different in many ways: slower, less wild, and of course adding the horns. They are really well used here, although some of the misinterpretation of this song as a “good time” song stems from these bright and brilliant things.
Once again, the vocal is absolutely astounding, Cooley effortlessly translating the long, long lines into indelible melody, as perhaps only he could.
In the end, most of it is the melody and extraordinary lyric; a frank statement of personal accountability, full of self-laceration and hard-won wisdom to share, just in the nick of time.
As always, Cooley tells the truth, but tells it slant, but anyone delving even slightly deeper than the surface can’t help but be blown away by what’s occurring in plain sight.
The lyrics themselves are one amazing line after another. From the first “No matter how many pens a poet drains/how full of shit he is or ain’t/well, it ain’t up to him to tell you” to the very crux in the center of the song:
“Said the man who pissed the river
If it’s owning up you’re after
It’s no mystery how the dam inside you burst
I’d have a lot of nerve to go feigning shock and outrage
If Id been my example I’d be worse
That part of you that feels alive is wired and can’t be severed
from the damage seeking part of you that runs it
Just don’t embrace it with a vengeance
before you’ve even shaved with a razor
that you bought with your own money…”
Again, as I wrote here in my (almost as) long essay on this song, this is just not usual rock fare. It is a statement of accountability, regret, shame, and in the end, gratitude that his actions did not finally wreck something he loved.
One place where the studio version comes near the wildness of the live version is the end instrumental section, where Matt and Brad show why they are one of the most underrated, agile, just purely musical bass/drum combos going. Matt’s line slithers here and there, never losing the pulse. Brad’s cymbal work again is brilliant, melodic, and striking. It’s simply my favorite song.
“Billy Ringo in the Dark’s” cathedral-like open is a beautiful example of how well this record sounds, beyond anything else. It is terribly wistful; I of course think of Smitty, and anyone else who could not quite sort it out, could not quite shake loose from the things that bound them. They may have left, and left pain in their wake, but the good moments, in the best of times, linger most. We just wish there were more to come.
Given the placement of “Wilder Days”, I almost see the last two songs as a suite of memory. PH takes his time in limning out the biography, and once again restraint is the watchword, with Cooley’s slide ghosting in and out, and deceptively little happening. It allows great moments, like the tick-tocking guitar behind the lead vocal as Patterson sings “now the days are getting shorter/and the years are counting down…” to be revealed, again much to the credit of the band and David Barbe, who have taken such care with this production, and like great chefs, added just enough of the ingredients, at the right time and right measure. The song subtly builds till Schaefer Llana joins PH, and just brings home the ache and memory and loss.
Nearly every time I’ve listened to these 42 brilliant minutes, I’ve just started it over at the top, and listened straight through. A real benefit to an old-school “20 minutes a side” record. It’s more ingestible length means I listen to it as intended more often from 1-9, taking it in as a whole piece, with each individual song speaking more to more of the others than a more bloated record might allow.
Of course there’s recency bias, but “Welcome 2 Club XIII” has already become one of my favorite records, ever, and given its “age-appropriate concerns”. don’t imagine that changing, but instead deepening, much like this record shows a band, still at the height of their creative powers, also showing depths which bode so well for their future. The songs on this record show without question that they don’t take a second of it, or the real lives reflected in these songs for granted. Not for a single second.
I’d have a lot of nerve to go feigning shock and outrage/If I'd been my example I’d be worse
^^^Great post. I am really enjoying this record even tho I was rather obsessed with the last three and their content lol. I agree with your thoughts on “We will never wake you up in the morning” such a beautiful tribute to Justin Townes Earle and his troubled life. My favorite song on the album for sure. A different layer of depth and insight to this one.
After listening to the album for the first time through, my first reaction was "Smitty would love this album." After the second listen, I think I was right the first time. I'm not 100% sure of exactly what I mean, but it sounds true, it sounds right, and I'm sticking with it. Y'all know that there is no way that I can leave it at that, but part of me is saying that's really all that needs to be said.
What used to be is gone and what ought to be ought not to be so hard
